House Rules
by lucidscreamer
Summary: Sequel to TtDbC. There's a very good reason Yugi and his friends aren't allowed to play Scrabble at the Mutou's house. Post-canon.


Title: House Rules

Author: Lucidscreamer

Series: The Epilogue Series (post-canon universe, crack!fic division); sequel to "'Twas the Duel before Christmas" and "Gainful Employment"

Disclaimer: Yugioh is the creation of the talented Mr. Kazuki Takahashi.

* * *

Yugi loved games. Board games, video games, card games, role-playing games - you name it, he played it. Once, he'd even made up a game using the entire contents of his sock drawer. (His mother hadn't been amused when she found him sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor, surrounded by socks. He'd had to clean up the mess while nursing a knot on his noggin courtesy of her trusty soup ladle.) So, yes. Yugi loved games and played them whenever the opportunity arose.

Being who he was (current Duel Monsters world champion, King of Games, Yami's aibou, and Guy Who Lived Above the Family Game Shop), the opportunity arose quite often. It arose most regularly on Thursdays, which was family game night in the Mutou household. The definition of "family" in this case being stretched to include, in addition to actual blood relatives: an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, Tristan, Téa, Joey, Ryou, and (on one memorable occasion) the Kaiba brothers.

The ceiling in the family room still bore the scorch marks from that particular Thursday.

"Blue Thursday" (don't ask) was also the source of some of the house rules that had since been set into place to ensure there were no repetitions of the events leading not only to said scorch marks but also to the introduction of his mother to the reality of the Shadow Realm, living Duel Monsters, and the fact that the guy who looked like her son was not, in fact, a look-alike hired for publicity purposes but rather a three-thousand year old former god-king with firm ideas about who was allowed to tell him what to do (i.e. _no one_ - well, except for Yugi, though Yami preferred to pretend he wasn't wrapped tightly around his aibou's little finger and Yugi preferred to let him have his harmless delusions).

It was also the day that Mrs. Mutou declared a moratorium on Scrabble, at least within the soon-to-be-repainted walls of the Mutou residence. So, when the gang wanted to play the popular word game, they had to assemble elsewhere, as they were doing on this particular Thursday. The group (currently consisting of Yugi, Yami, Joey, and Seto) was arranged around a felt-topped table in the game room at the Kaiba mansion. In theory, they were playing Scrabble. Practically speaking, they were three words into the game and about half an hour into the verbal sniping that passed for casual conversation between Yami and Seto.

"I still can't believe I let you talk me into this." Seto Kaiba folded his arms over his chest and leveled a glare worthy of one of his dragons at Yami.

"After that fiasco of a Christmas charity duel, you owe me." Yami glared right back.

Seto's jaw didn't actually hit the floor, but that was only because he was clenching it too hard for it to move. After a moment during which the only sound was the grinding of his teeth, he pried his jaws far enough apart to growl, "After that fiasco, I should have fired you - preferrably out of a cannon! That arena isn't fit for use. The stands are still glowing purple and it's been three damn weeks! I can't believe I actually have to find out the fucking half-life of magical fall-out..."

"I tried to tell you I shouldn't duel in public," Yami shot back, crossing his own arms and somehow managing to look down his nose at the much taller man. "You should have listened to my warnings. Anyway, I agreed to take a week off. You owe me for that, you know. Grandpa had me handing out flyers for the shop all week. _At the mall_."

Listening to them, Yugi fought not to roll his eyes. Only Yami could get Seto to pay him _not_ to show up at work for a week. (An _ancient Egyptian_ week, at that. Apparently, Seto was more than willing to follow an obsolete calendar if it garnered him three extra Yami-free days.) Of course - as Yugi well knew since he'd heard the ensuing rant so often he could practically quote it in his sleep, including the ancient Egyptian epithets - Yami really _hadn't_ enjoyed his week off from Kaiba Corp. Grandpa had talked him into making an appearance at the local mall to promote the game shop and it had gone about as well as such things usually did when Yami's fans were involved.

Handing out promotional flyers was currently in the top five of Yami's Things Not to Do Again Even if I Live another Three Thousand Years. (The top three were, in ascending order: (3) eat at Joe's, (2) get soul trapped in tacky gold jewelry due to act of self-sacrifice, and (1) lose Aibou's soul in a dark game.) Ordinarily, Yami at least tolerated public appearances for the sake of helping boost sales but he now drew the line at the mall - or _maul_, as he insisted on calling it after the last time, which he barely escaped with his dignity and _most_ of his clothing intact. Those had been Yugi's favorite pair of leather pants, too, dammit.

Remembering the amount of sun-gilded skin on display by the time Yami had escaped the maul, er, mall, Yugi scowled. Come to think of it, he wasn't all that fond of Yami's public appearances either. Not when it meant strangers ogling (and grabbing) his partner's...assets.

He tuned back into the conversation in time to hear said partner's deep voice growl, "I am not cheating!"

"S-r-k-h is not a word. It's a random collection of consonants!"

"It _is_ a word!"

"Eh, I gotta side with the rich boy on this one, Yami. Real words have vowels."

"This one doesn't. I am not responsible for _your_ written language's unfortunate dependence on vowels."

Oh, god. Not this again. Most of them were such skilled gamers that they had to play by altered "house rules" to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed on exactly what those alterations should entail. Yugi covered his face with his palm and congratulated himself on insisting they leave the Puzzle at home.

"Hey, if Yami gets to count pork-chop-loaf-a-bread-squiggle as a word, then my word has to count, too!"

"'Fuggedaboutit' is not a word, Wheeler."

And to think that, when Yugi played the word "about", he'd just been happy to use the "u".

"You wanna use Japanese, Yami wants to use Egyptian, so _I_ can use Brooklynese if I wanna, Moneybags."

"We agreed no slang. And, anyway, your spelling is atrocious, Joey."

"Wha-?"

"There's no bread loaf in _serekh_."

Of course, there was no "pork chop" or "squiggle" in the word either, but no one bothered to point that out. Yugi uncovered his eyes in time to watch everyone else in Kaiba's game room gape at the Pharaoh, who turned his own gaze to Yugi and raised both eyebrows as if to ask _what did I say _this_ time?_ Yugi just shook his head.

"You know what? Forget the word games." Grabbing the Scrabble board, Yugi tossed it over his shoulder, ignoring the clatter of letter tiles as they scattered across the floor. Since everything they played (up to and including Rock-Paper-Scissors and Twister) turned into World War III, he figured they might as well go with the flow. "Let's play Risk, instead."

* * *

_srkh_ - complain about, accuse

Author's Note: Of course, there are no "pork chop" or "squiggle" hieroglyphs. :) The one Joey calls a pork chop is actually a flowering reed leaf. There is, however, a bread loaf hieroglyph. It represents the letter "t" and/or the word "bread".

The hieroglyphs for the word Yami wants to play are: folded cloth, mouth, circle-with-lines-across-it (there's some debate over the exact item the hieroglyph depicts), as well as a determinative glyph of a scroll (meaning "this word represents an abstract concept") and possibly another determinative of a man with his hand to his mouth. The determinative glyphs are never pronounced and are not part of the spelling of the word.

Edited to fix a word mix-up.


End file.
